Last edited by David on Wed Sep 05, 2012 11:00 am, edited 2 times in total.

Wed Sep 05, 2012 10:58 am

David

Platinum Boarder

Joined: Thu Jul 09, 2009 12:35 pmPosts: 3028Location: tulsa OK

Re: Syncro Maximo Destructo! (AKA Brian's Syncro build threa

oh, & thx 4 the 'dr. who' reference, as well, guv'nah !!

Wed Sep 05, 2012 10:58 am

stl_stadtroller

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Joined: Mon Jul 27, 2009 2:47 pmPosts: 395Location: St. Louis, MO

Re: Syncro Maximo Destructo! (AKA Brian's Syncro build threa

Work continues on the Subagon Syncro, as usual..

This past Sunday I re-installed the drive shaft finally. This was a bigger pain in the ass than it should have been and required that I drop down the nose of the trans and loosen the front diff from its mounts. But with the help of the trusty BFH, it is in... and vibrating the hell out the van at speed

Removed the passenger door window regulator and dissembled the motor housing and regulator "wheel house"... the wire wasn't tangled up like the drivers side thankfully, but for some reason the motor would lock up going "up" on occasion. Everything got cleaned up and greased and put back together. The passenger window now works, but is still pretty slow. It will do.

Spare tire carrier, and spare tire re-installed and mounted.

Got the passenger side middle sliding window catch free for the first time ever!! Repeated pounding with a hammer and drift up/down got it operating and some lube to keep it that way.I also finally figured out how to remove the screens (just pull... duh) they clip in at the bottom. Cleaned out dead bugs that have been there since I owned the van.

Installed a inside/outside thermometer into the Truckfridge so that I see exactly what dial setting give me in temperature inside the fridge.

Installed the transmission ground strap that I forgot to put in during assembly.

Tightened and re-positioned a few hose clamps on the still very slightly dripping coolant hoses. I sure hope that I don't end up having to remove and replace any of these hoses... what a major PITA draining the coolant and re-filling is!!!

One major goal of the day didn't get accomplished... installing the e-brake cables to the rear disk calipers. I got to modifying the cables as instructed, only to find that there were merely 4-5 strands of cable left keeping the one OG cable you use together!! DaNGNABBITT!!!!!Ordered a new driver's side cable from Van-Cafe today.

My point of major concern now though is that I've developed a bit of roughness on idle - very very suble - that becomes more pronounced, but still very subtle at highway speed. It feels like something of a very low vibration or harmonic... my rearview mirror is even vibrating from it.all, very very subtle.no error codes on it, power seems normal, no leaks or noises out of the ordinary.No idea where to start yet.. if it were old-skool Air Cooled I'd say a dead cylinder, but again... no codes.

Haven't driving Big Red much since the Brewery weekend down in Springfield, but I've had the Vanagon out in the weather and daily driving for a couple weeks recently.

It became plainly obvious that I was not going to get away with just having the front heater. My front heat never worked that great before, but I was hoping that maybe post-conversion with all my new lines and whatnot that performance would improve. Not so.My front heat output is barely comparable to a warm mouse fart.

I had planned for this eventuality however, and despite having removed my rear heater core, I had run a loop of hose through the holes and into the back seat in case i had to put it back in.

I tried to do this last weekend, but discovered that in the past year I've lost the little spring clips that hold the heater core box/enclosure together. Replacement clips from Van-Cafe took a week to arrive.

Finally, last Sunday I got the box re-assembled and spliced the hose and re-mounted the core. Triumphant, I turned on the blower motor and ... OMG! THAT SMELL!! WTF!?!?

oh yeah... I forgot that I had a slight mishap with a 1-qt bottle of Hoppe's #9 on the workbench that spilled all over the exposed core. I thought I had sufficiently cleaned it out and that enough time had gone by to air out and dry.oops..

Diane thinks it smells "like some kind of lemony cleaning product".. I think I'll just leave it at that

Anyway.. finally at last i'm driving around in a toasty warm Vanagon again with the rear heater in place. It was nice having the storage while it lasted.. ::sigh::

Holy Crap! Has it really been since Feb 2013 that I last updated this thread!? Oh my.

Well, work continues on Big Red in small increments. Otherwise it's been fairly solid over the last couple years. Diane and I took it on a trip through the southwest last fall, and had a few issues catch up with us.

1st - the gorram crusty trans is starting to puke oil like you wouldn't believe. Gets all over the back hatch and leaves drips on the pavement. We stopped by Pete's in Broken Arrow for some help in getting it topped up - took about 1 1/5 quarts I think? yipes.Then we had a headlight bulb (an 80/100) burn out somewhere around Amarillo, and I got pulled over for it when we hit New Mexico!! Let us go though.Then the next day we were driving into Chaco Culture NP, and a rock punctured oil filter!! All 6 quarts lost as we barely made it to the Visitor Center.. No cell service in Chaco, so we had to use their phone and call AAA, who sent out a "tow truck" wich turned out to be some young dude in a monster truck with a trailer. He decided to bring his wife and 1 month old baby along for the 3 hour drive. Thanks bud.He drove us all the way into Farmington NM, and dropped us at an AutoZone where I bought new oil filters, oil, and filter wrench and fixed it all up in the parking lot. Got the headlight bulb replaced as well.

A couple days later, as we were making the wrong turn from Cripple Creek CO and wound up in Victor, we got backed into by a kid in a big SUV with his trailer hitch ball still in. A personal pet peeve of mine.

Somehow, at that very moment, the adaptor Power Steering line which connects the Subaru pump to the Vanagon line in the engine bay decided to blow a hole! On our Anniversary.Spent the evening in Cripple Creek trying to find a place that could fab up a new high pressure hose. But, it turns out Cripple Creek is some sort of geographic oddity - 2 weeks from everywhere! They don't even have an AutoZone or NAPA or anything.drove out of there on a dry PS pump to Woodland Park, CO - the nearest NAPA. They couldn't help but turned us on to an industrial supply place down in Colorado Springs. Drove there.They were able to fab up a hose for us, and I installed it in the parking lot. Whew!

From there on we did fine. I still need to go back and clean up my "bush fixes" though..

Anyway, back to the updates!

I did some R&R to the front shifter mechanism, and replaced the plastic sliders that are often worn or missing on the shift linkage:

Had to drill out 2 of the 4 bolts holding in the assembly..

Got the box removed, and you can see my missing plastic nubs..

Shifter out, and ready to bust into it.

These are all the component parts in the shifter assembly up front.

New bits getting lubed and assembled.

All back together and pressed into the housing

cleaned up and painted the box & shifter while I had it out

new plastic sliders and epoxy kit

Epoxied onto the linkage.

Getting it all buttoned back up!

All done!!

Bad thing is, I still have intermittent issues getting into 1st gear. I wind up having to push down on the shifter like you're going around the lockout for L/R.I'm not too good at adjusting these things.. still figuring it out.

Also replaced a leaky clutch master cylinderold coming out.

old vs new

new one goes in! pretty easy job.bleeding the line was a bit tricky. wound up having to connect my power vaccuum bleeder at the back and really go to town on it. In the end, it was all good.

Also long NLA - was the front heater valve control cable. Someone finally got new stock in, and I was able to replace it as well.had to make some adjustments to the mounting so that it would not want to bend and be ruined again when operating the lever.I can finally now operate the front heat with the lever on the panel!!

Last edited by stl_stadtroller on Thu May 05, 2016 1:22 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Thu May 05, 2016 1:19 pm

stl_stadtroller

Platinum Boarder

Joined: Mon Jul 27, 2009 2:47 pmPosts: 395Location: St. Louis, MO

Power Window switches

This past week, I decided to finally do something about my shitty power window switches. They both operated anemically, and when the passenger window would go down, it would hardly ever want to go back UP again. Diane was apparently tired of this, and for Christmas got me the GoWesty switch relocation kit.

Basically just a package of DPDT momentary toggles, some wire, and crimp connectors. Nothing you can't whip together for a few bucks from your local electrical supply.. but hey, it was a gift.. so here we go.

Good thing I had already decided I was going to replace the door panels, because this was the last time there were coming off without major damage,

You gotta get to where the wiring loom comes into the van from the door, so on the driver's side that means dropping the whole fuse panel and dealing with this:

In the door it's just an easy job of cutting off some factory connectors, crimping on some new ones, and joining them together:

I mounted up the toggles like so on the dash. The position now mirrors that on my Fiat.

And that's about all there is to it! the relay on the fuse panel gets tossed, and power comes right from the factory breaker.Boy do those windows go! Both go up and down quite speedily now. Almost like a modern car!

And best of all - Diane's goes down *and* up! Happy wife = happy life.

Obviously there's been lots of water intrusion into my doors, and one look at the outer scrapers reveals why. Also, if you hang our arm out the window, you would wind up with a bunch of black rubber crap on the back of your arm. Remember my earlier comment about a happy wife?

They had the best deal around that I could find, and was actually in stock. Kit includes everything you need, and plus they send cookies with your orders.

My outter scrapers were really roached, as you can see. Inners weren't all that bad but I decided to be thorough.

Everything just pulls out - no tools really needed other than something to pry with. The new rubber doesn't have the chrome channel, so unless you're doing the vent wings too, that has to be trimmed at the upright. I just used a pair of sharp dikes and then tried to dress the end as best I could. If you're Walsh or Bowman, this obviously wouldn't fly

The work went really fast. Like I said, it all just pulls right out. Cleaned up the dirt, and luckily I didn't have any rust issues to address.

So fast, I hardly took any pics. New seals slide right in with a little help from som Simple Green as lube. The window scrapers clip into 4 clips inside the door. Just give them a whack with the palm of your hand and they snap right in.

Driver's side complete as well.. Whole job took less than an hour - including prep & clean up!

Looking good Brian! Not sure whether that was a compliment or a dig to Walsh and Bowman, but I'll take it as a good thing. I've got lots of little stuff to do to my '87 Westy once I get it out of storage soon at Kent's. Definitely got to do the headlight plastic thingies, maybe scrappers, would really like to install my new LP gas tank regulator and autostop valves (haven't used the stove for 10 years now) but don't know shit about propane and bending lines....

Keep it up Brian! You're inspiring!

Bill Bowman

Sat May 07, 2016 1:34 pm

Willeye

Platinum Boarder

Joined: Tue Feb 24, 2009 10:09 amPosts: 1312

Re: Syncro Maximo Destructo! (AKA Brian's Syncro build threa

Windows look pretty good. Why not just do the vents as well? Does the kit not provide those? Not needed?

I recently installed some Vanagonish parts in my split. Got a hot start and headlight relay kit from this dude on the Samba. He does lots of wiring mod stuff for Vanagons.

yep, that particular kit only covers the roll-up window. Doing the vent wings opens up a whole other ball o wax I didn't need to fuss with.

I am familiar with the relays (and seller) - actually re-doing my headlight relays soon, with the blocks that snap into the Vanagon panel and VW relays, so it all appears stock. Ignition bypass came with my Subaru harness conversion

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